Part 3: Practice

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of prayer from Colossians 1:3-20.

Throughout my spiritual pilgrimage so far, two sources have largely shaped and continue to shape my own efforts to pray. The less important and the less authoritative of these two has been the advice, the wisdom, the modeling of senior Christians who have come alongside and tried to teach me how to pray. I have no time this evening to detail all they have tried to teach me (I have not always been a very good student), but it may be worth devoting a few minutes to a list of some of the advice they have given me before we turn to this next prayer of the apostles.

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1. The things senior Christians have tried to teach me and from which I have benefited in my own attempts of prayer.

A) Much praying is not done because we do not plan to pray.

It’s obvious on the face of it, but it has to be said. One does not drift into spirituality. One does not coast into a disciplined prayer life. It is very easy to think, when you’re at university, you’ll develop that kind of disciplined prayer life after you graduate. I have a secret. You won’t.

The habits you establish now will, in all likelihood, either rise up to bless you all the days of your life or return to haunt you for approximately the same period. You will not drift into a disciplined prayer life. We do not pray simply because we do not plan to pray. What that means is we need to return to the old practices of setting aside time to pray.

It is much better to pray for 5 or 10 minutes a day every day than for an all-night prayer session once every two years. It should be part of our regular discipline, and in fact, although I know some people are nighthawks and some people are early-birds, I would still say for the overwhelming majority of us, we ought to develop the practice of setting aside a bit of time at the beginning of the day.

If it’s at the beginning of the day, it tends to draw you on to the things of the day and you pray about where you’re going, what you’re doing, to whom you’re going to speak about the events of the day. Whereas, if it is at the end of the day, you tend to be looking backward

finding something to be thankful for or to complain about but fewer things to intercede for.

B) Use helps to impede mental drift.

In the first student pastorate I had in the mid-60s, I lived some miles away from the area where I was trying to plant a church. I had this old jalopy. It probably came out of the ark. It was aged, but it had an excellent radio in it. Being a news buff, I’d turn on the radio going back and forth from where I was rooming to this area where I was visiting door-to-door trying to plant a church. You might not be afflicted with a mind that picks up music, but I am. I only have to listen to a song a couple of times and it’s there.

If I kiss you will you go away

Like in the game my mother used to play

You’re so much hurt I wish you wouldn’t stay

If I kiss you will you go away

Ottawa. 1965. I could sing it, but I won’t. I could come in in the evening and get down on my knees to pray for some of the people I had visited, the lady who seemed to be right on the verge of becoming a Christian. “God, would you please intervene in her life, and if I kiss you, will you go away? No! No! No!” Am I the only one who has problems like that? Use helps to impede mental drift. Let me list 8 or 10 of them.

First, articulate your prayers. Voice them. Instead of just praying in your mind, voice your prayers, not so loudly that inmates can hear you six cells down but loudly enough that you’re not daydreaming. As long as you’re actually articulating your prayers, you’re not daydreaming. It takes a little discipline. It seems a bit strange at first. After you have gotten into the practice of it, it’s the easiest and most natural thing in the world, and it will impede mental drift.

Secondly, use the prayers of Scripture. That’s one of the reasons why we’re going through the prayers of Paul this term. Use the prayers of Scripture and pray through them into your life and into the lives of those around you.

Thirdly, use the worship section of a decent hymnbook. Choose a couple of hymns. Read them through. Focus on a verse or two and praise God for the terms of those things. I’ll mention other helps in terms of prayer lists and the like in due course. I know one pastor who has recently gone to be with the Lord. He used to spend an hour every day walking back and forth in his study as he prayed. He’d carry his prayer list in his Bible, and he’d walk up and down and pray back and forth, back and forth. Mind you, he had the kind of study where he could do that. If you did that in mine, you’d be so busy turning around you wouldn’t have time to pray.

Fourthly, write out some of your prayers. Keep a prayer diary. It’s what the Puritans used to do. I know a pastor in Chicago, Bill Hybels, who is so troubled by the problem of mental drift, that for 45 minutes a day as he devotes himself to prayer, he actually writes out his prayers as he goes along. He doesn’t keep them. They’re not for posterity. They’re just to focus his mind. For those who will pray there are things to do to impede mental drift.

C) At various periods of your life, develop, if possible, a regular prayer-partner relationship.

Incidentally, if you are not married, as most of you aren’t, make sure your prayer partner is someone of the same sex. If you are married and choose a prayer partner of the other sex, make sure it is your spouse.

The reason for this is quite simple. Good praying in a prayer-partner relationship (I don’t mean just meeting together casually to pray once or twice with somebody but a regular, sustained, weekly meeting where you set aside an hour or two to pray and you become honest with one another and push) is a very intimate experience, and intimacy in one area of life breeds intimacy in other areas of life.

It is a fact of history that in various times of revival in the history of the Christian church, promiscuity has sometimes increased. That was so, for example, of the so-called Kentucky folk revivals last century. It was demonstrable that in the sort of warm glow that permeated the aftermath of those meetings, they’d put their arms around each other and hug, and they were all accepting each other in the Lord. Pretty soon they were in the sack together, too. Be careful. Don’t be deceived. Intimacy in one area can lead to intimacy in other areas.

Let me tell you quite frankly, I’ve been exceedingly fortunate in this area. One friend in the mid-60s again took me aside one summer and said, “Don, I’m going to teach you to pray.” I was in university about the age of most of you reading chemistry and mathematics. Every Monday night we’d get together at whatever time we were both free, and he gradually taught me to pray. We would spend half an hour or an hour and, sometimes, four or five or six or seven hours. I found out after a few weeks I wasn’t enjoying it. It was duty. Then he took me to another stage I’ll come to in a moment.

D) Choose some models but choose them well.

It will do you a world of good if you can get up to some people, close to them, who know how to pray. You listen to them pray, and you know they meet with God. If you get close to that sort of person and listen to them pray, what they pray for, how they pray, it will do you a world of good, but when I say choose your models and choose them well, don’t ape their idiom.

Some people have a nasal twang. Some people use Thees and Thous. Some people have a certain kind of litany they go through. Don’t ape their idiom, but listen to what they pray for, how they pray, their concerns, the way they argue with God, and watch what they do. A lot of Christian discipleship is picked up by modeling and, conversely, by watching the models.

Again, in all fairness, I have had a great privilege. My father has been my best model. My father was a church planter, a Baptist minister. All the time I was growing up, his study was in our house. I cannot remember a day all the years I was growing up when he did not retreat to his study and pray for 45 minutes to an hour. He always vocalized his prayers, not loudly enough so we could hear what he was saying but loudly enough we knew he was praying and we just didn’t bother him during that time.

I can remember in the tough years of church planting in Quebec when he’d preach an evangelistic sermon to vast crowds of 15, when he would normally after the morning service come and play around the piano with us while lunch was being prepared, on occasion, he would retreat into his study, and I would go looking for him. “Dad, it’s time to play!” More than once, I found him on his knees praying in tears for the people to whom he had ministered.

In the annals of clergy, my father is not a great man. He never wrote a book, never had a great deal of education, not a world-class preacher, but I’ll tell you this: my father wasn’t a hypocrite. The worst possible heritage you can leave your children is high spiritual pretension and very little spiritual performance. The best possible heritage you can leave your children is minimal spiritual pretension and high spiritual performance. We begin by being poor in spirit, and then we seek the face of God. Find models. Find models.

I remember when I came back in 1981 after I had been away for a few years. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ elder daughter came up to me and said, “My father told me to tell you that he prays for you every day.” You must understand, although I’ve known the Lloyd-Jones’ family for years, I have never been a real intimate.

If he was praying for me, several circles removed from any sort of inner circle, what kind of prayer life did that man have? I had to ask myself, “How many times have I ever prayed for Lloyd-Jones?” Choose your models. Choose them well. Study their content and their passion but do not ape their idiom.

E) If you begin to exercise leadership of any sort, whether in a small group setting or standing here, work at your public praying.

I’ll tell you why. You have dominical authority for it, authority from Jesus himself. Do you remember what he says in John, chapter 11, at the tomb of Lazarus? People were standing around weeping and the like. Then he starts to pray, and he says, “I did not say this for your benefit or for my benefit but for the benefit of those who are hearing me.”

He understood, in praying to God in public, he is exercising a teaching, modeling kind of ministry. Some of what you pray in public with others listening, although it is still a prayer directed to God, is also framed and couched and shaped by the sheer consciousness that you are teaching others how to pray, whether you like it or not.

How did you learn to pray? If you’ve come from a Christian home, then you first learned to pray at your parents’ knees. My children don’t remember learning to pray. They could pray as soon as they could talk. If your home was steeped in the Authorized Version and you come from a fairly strict church or the like, then eventually, when you first attended a public prayer meeting and you began to pray, it probably sounded something like, “We thank Thee, great and merciful God, that Thou in thy great mercy hast condescended to redeem us by sending thy dear Son.”

Whereas if, by contrast, you got converted in the local CU six weeks ago here, your first prayer may have sounded something like, “We just want to thank you, Jesus, for being here,” or something equivalent. The point of the matter is, in both instances, people have learned to pray by absorbing the prayers of those around them. That’s part of discipleship and passing on the torch, but that means those who exercise any kind of leadership should take thought for what they are praying so that they are instructing others.

F) Develop a system for your prayer lists.

I’ve used a variety of things over the years, and eventually, I settled on the form I’ll tell you. The pattern was taught me by a veteran China-hand, a missionary in China from 1935 to 1950. He has taught it to various people, and I pass it on to you for what it’s worth. I don’t care if you use this system or not, but it’s a good system. If you don’t like it, choose a better one.

I have a manila file folder. On the first sheet, I have just briefly listed the kinds of things I should pray for daily: my wife and my family, the things that are tied to me, to who I am. If I don’t pray for these things, who will? My children and so on. I’m not talking now about matters of praise or the like. Matters for which I am responsible before God to intercede. That’s the kind of issue I have in mind, the kinds of things that surround me.

The second sheet is the kinds of things that are temporary but surround me. For example, meetings I’m going to speak at. There’s no point praying for this series of KIKU meetings two years from now. That will be off the list long before then. Things that are impending, exams that are coming up, somebody I’m going to talk to about the Lord, a luncheon meeting, discipline in my own life in some area or the like. Short-term things you cross off as you go along.

There’s another list I sometimes put in there that I won’t go into. After that, I file in alphabetical order letters, prayer letters, personal letters from friends, matters of concern, notes that I’ll put a person’s name on. Then I pray through a few of those each day, and then put them on the bottom of the pile.

That means, in my case, all my former students who write me letters and keep me informed about their present ministry in Zaire or Chad or Asia. They write to me, and they expect me to pray for them. I give them my word that, if they write to me, I’ll pray for them. That’s my solemn pledge to them. Trinity has 1,600 students a year. Not many of them take me up on it, but enough of them do that I’m kept busy with these prayer letters.

File them in alphabetical order. Put them on the bottom. Put them on the bottom. As I read through the letter, I’ll highlight the important things. Some of the things they ask for, I don’t think are worth praying for. I don’t pray for them. Some of the things are strategic. They’re part of the value of the kingdom. They’re important for holiness. They’re important for growth. Those I will pray for in Jesus’ name.

When another prayer letter comes in from the same person, because they’re still in alphabetical order, although the top of the pile might now be K, I can immediately pull out the old one and put in the new one. The system is always being renewed and is infinitely expandable. I just finished T. Tomorrow I hit W. I’m with Carol Walker in Pakistan who used to sit where you’re sitting today.

That might not be a system for you, but you need some renovating system whereby you pray for people in your CU, pray for people in your church, pray for missionaries, ministers, and others, pray for people for whom you are concerned in evangelism. I noticed the KIKU produces various college prayer requests. You need some kind of regular system so that when you get down to pray you will have something for which to pray.

Otherwise, you will have this sort of experience. “Well, now, Lord. Saturday night the speaker said I’m supposed to pray, so here I am. What shall I pray about?” You pray for your family and your church and your CU. You go all around the world and pray for as many things as you think about. You look at your watch, and it has taken about two and a half minutes. With a very simple file system and a few prayers from Scripture, you can land at intercessory prayer for an hour and wonder where the time went. Believe me. A little discipline in this area is worth an enormous amount.

G) Mingle praise and intercession, but when you intercede, tie as many requests as possible to Scripture.

That, too, came out of that summer with Ken Hall, the chap who took me aside and tried to teach me to pray. I was a very poor student, and I wish I had always obeyed what I had been taught. Over the years, I have tried to take one or two others aside the same way. There was a chap here at Cambridge almost 20 years ago who was doing a PhD with me. For the last 18 months or so, we set aside our Monday nights to pray and we did exactly the same thing as what I’m about now to describe.

In area after area where we tried to intercede for people, we tried to think, “What biblical principles are there behind this matter that we should invoke? What is God’s mind on this? What should we be praying about?” If there is a particular issue, do you just say, “God, bless the person in question” or are there things you should be praying for?

Are there biblical principles, biblical texts, biblical promises, or biblical certainties about God’s character? What does God have invested in this situation? Eventually, therefore, your prayer life becomes an incentive to better knowledge of Scripture, and your knowledge of Scripture is being put to use in your prayer life.

Since getting married, the only regular prayer partner I’ve had is my wife. Most of you aren’t married, but let me say one or two things about that while I’m at it. If you think once you’re married it will be very easy to pray with your spouse all the days of your life, think again. All kinds of barriers can build up. Of course, we pray at the meals with our children. We pray before we go to bed, and we always (just about always) have a family altar with ourselves and the children, but we found this pretty easily itself could become formulaic, this sort of thing you do.

The time came when we have had to set aside for a six-week or an eight-week block one night a week just to pray. We would put aside Thursday night. “Thursday night, you drop your activities. I won’t go anywhere to speak. We’re home.” Thursday night, whether it’s for half an hour or two hours, we would then take out our lists and start to pray and intercede. Otherwise, we’d never get around to doing it. We’d be telling everybody else what to do, and we’d never do it ourselves.

We have not been very good at this. Let me tell you quite frankly, we’re both very busy people. We can get swamped by things. Illnesses come along. Trips. Who knows what? Unless you plan to pray and plan to get in a disciplined kind of prayer-partner relationship with those nearest and dearest to you, you will do all kinds of things with them and not pray. At the end of the day, it’s what you do that reflects your highest priorities, not what you say you believe in.

H) Pray until you pray.

That was old Puritan advice. Pray until you pray. This can be put a number of different ways. We must learn, in the language of Jude, to pray in the Holy Spirit. The fact that he encouraged us to pray in the Holy Spirit proves it’s possible to pray (shall I say it?) out of the Holy Spirit, just in a formulaic sort of way.

The critical factor here, as far as I can see, is time. Honesty before God and time. If we are so quick in our prayers, somewhere between pulling on our socks and sipping our orange juice before we beat it down the stairs to get to lectures, then there is not time to be still before the Lord, to think on his name, to be quiet, to read a bit of Scripture meditatively, and to pray. We have no time for him.

Just as you cannot build a deep relationship without time with an individual, so you cannot build a deep relationship with God, but those who spend some time with God (maybe short amounts faithfully but longer amounts sometimes) discover a sense of the presence of God. C.S. Lewis put it in a very powerful poem.

Master, they say that when I seem

To be in speech with you,

Since you make no replies, it’s all a dream

—One talker aping two.

They are half right, but not as they

Imagine; rather, I

Seek in myself the things I meant to say,

And lo! the wells are dry.

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake

The Listener’s role, and through

My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake

The thoughts I never knew.

And thus you neither need reply

Nor can; thus, while we seem

Two talking, thou art One forever, and I

No dreamer, but thy dream.

That might not be put, finally, from a theological point of view, but it’s what Paul means when he speaks of the Spirit coming alongside and aiding us in Romans 8 in our intercession, sometimes with groanings that cannot be uttered and teaching us to pray, praying in Paul’s language in the Holy Spirit, the same language as Jude uses.

Those are some practical helps. They have nothing whatsoever to do with the passage this evening to which we now turn, for by far, the most important and authoritative of the sources that have shaped my prayer life have been the growing study of the prayers of Scripture, praying with Paul, praying with David, praying with Moses, praying with the Lord Jesus, praying with Solomon.

We learn from these prayers what to pray for, how to address our heavenly Father, the grounds of our petitions and the like. Before I draw attention to some lessons from this prayer, don’t try and follow me in these passages, now, but simply listen as I read some of Paul’s prayers. I’m just going to read them one after the other.

I’ll mention the reference so you can jot the reference down and you can look these things up on your own, for in this series, we’re looking at seven prayers. That’s all. In fact, there are a lot more than that, but as I read them, listen carefully to the kinds of things Paul prays for. What does Paul pray for?

Romans 15:5–6: “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Romans 15:13: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” Hope here means hope for the end, hope for Christ’s return and all that brings of a new heaven and a new earth.

Again, the same chapter, verses 30 and following: “I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Pray that I may be rescued from the unbelievers in Judea and that my service in Jerusalem may be acceptable to the saints there, so that by God’s will I may come to you with joy and together with you be refreshed. The God of peace be with you all. Amen.”

We’ll skip 1 Corinthians and come to 2 Corinthians, chapter 13, verses 7 and following. There, Paul prays, “We are glad whenever we are weak but you are strong; and our prayer is for your perfection. This is why I write these things when I am absent, that when I come I may not have to be harsh in my use of authority.” Our prayer is for your perfection. Verse 7: “We pray to God that you will not do anything wrong.”

Ephesians, chapter 1, verses 15 and following, a prayer we’ll look at in a couple of weeks. “For this reason, ever since I heard about your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I have not stopped giving thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers. I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.

I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.”

The same book, Ephesians, chapter 3, verses 16 and following, “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” The idea is that Christ might establish his home truly in you, take it over, and make it genuinely his home.

He says, “I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Not that you might love Christ better, but that you might better grasp his love for you, for you cannot be a genuinely mature Christian unless you have an increasing appreciation for his love for you. That’s the assumption, and that’s the prayer.

Again, in Philippians, chapter 1, that Dr. Clements will be looking at next week. “This is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God.”

That’s only about half of them. We could go on and on and on. What’s the point? The point is, although it is right to pray for almost anything (almost any topic), does not Peter say we are to cast all our cares on God for he cares for us? Nevertheless, if the heart of our praying is too far removed from the heart of Pauline praying, it may simply be a mark of our paganization. Even our praying may simply be a mark of how far we have drifted from the values of Scripture.

The Bible itself must reform our prayer lives, and it’s in that sense, that gradually … gradually … as I’ve worked at the prayers of Scripture, they are beginning to take fruit in my own prayers. We must ask ourselves as we read these prayers, “When have we prayed those things for ourselves, for those around us, for those for whom we are responsible?”

1. Three observations about this prayer in the passage in question (Colossians 1)

A) The extent of Paul’s praying

Paul says (verse 9), “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you.” You must understand Paul did not plant the church in Colossae. He simply heard about the planting of the church in Colossae through, in fact, one of his own converts by the name of Epaphras, and having heard about the fruit that had been established there through the one of the converts of his own ministry, he has added them to his prayer list.

Our prayer lists can be so parochial and narrow, but here you have a hint of the extent of Paul’s prayer lists. As he hears about another church planted, he adds it in somewhere. He fits that in as well.

B) The unceasing nature of this kind of praying

Again, “Since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you.” This doesn’t mean Paul doesn’t stop to eat or do anything else. It means, “We have not stopped in our regular times of prayer to pray even for you.” He doesn’t take on board some concern and then pray for it once and forget about it. He has some way of keeping the list, as it were, so it comes up again and again and again, and regularly he prays for these people.

C) The link we have observed in the two previous sessions between intercession and thanksgiving

I won’t go through it in detail tonight. I just draw your attention to it. It begins in verse 9. “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying.” For what reason? For the reasons just established in verses 3 and following.

“We always thank God, the Father, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith and your love and your hope.” That is the Pauline triad. “We have heard of the marks of spiritual grace in your life. All over the world, the evidence of your growth in grace is now being spread abroad, and since the day we heard about it, we haven’t stopped praying for you.”

There is a link constantly in Paul between signs of spiritual growth and what he prays for. We have the tendency to wait until things are falling apart and then call a prayer meeting. When things are going well, then we can be a little lackadaisical. I mean, we’re being blessed, aren’t we? But when things are falling apart, then you call a prayer meeting. In fact, Paul’s pattern is anything but that.

Most of his prayers are tied to news he has heard about how well things are going. “We’ve heard of God’s grace in your life, and ever since we heard about it, we haven’t stopped praying to God for you that …” Pray for what God is doing. You see the hand of God at work? Pray he’ll do some more, that he’ll keep on going. That’s where the Devil is going to work, so pray for what God is doing. Don’t just wait until things are falling apart and then have an emergency prayer meeting. That is typical of many, many of Paul’s prayers.

3. The content of the prayer

A) Paul asks God to fill believers with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.

It’s not a very creative heading to an outline (I’ve simply quoted the text), but I couldn’t think of any way of making it simpler, and when we unpack the text, we’ll discover it’s profound.

Paul asks God to fill believers with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. The prayer, then, is for knowledge of God’s will. What is that? We often think of knowing God’s will in terms of a marriage partner or a vocational choice. “Shall I enter grad school or shall I enter industry or shall I do something else? Shall I travel for a year in the Bahamas? What shall I do? What shall I do with my life? What is God’s will? If God would only tell me what his will is, then I’d do it.”

It’s surprising actually how often the Bible speaks of the will of God, and almost without exception, God’s will is not classed in Scripture in terms of vocational choice. Both in the old covenant and in the new, you read instead texts like, “Teach me to do your will …” Psalm 143 “… for you are my God. May your good Spirit lead me on level ground.” Doing God’s will is doing his Word, obeying him.

Romans 12, verses 1 and 2. There, as you know, we are exhorted to offer up our bodies up as living sacrifices to God which is our spiritual service. Then we are told, “We will be able to test and approve what God’s will is, his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” Notice by offering ourselves up to God, we will test and approve God’s will. Not we will gain some sort of insight into our vocational choices. Rather, the testing and the proving of God’s will emerges out of a matrix of obedience, of offering up ourselves daily to God.

Again, Ephesians 5:17: “Do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” That is put in parallel to, “Do not be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit.” Don’t be foolish, but know what the Lord’s will is. His will is being

I don’t know if God wants you to go to grad school. I do know God’s will for you is that you be holy.

How about this one? “Give thanks to God in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” Are you the complaining type, the kind who whines and moans and is bitter and harbors resentment and really loves to nurture a grudge? The damp squid at every party? I have news for you. This is God’s will for you, that you be thankful. That’s God’s will for you, and if you’re not thankful, if your life is not increasingly characterized by thanksgiving, you are out of the will of God.

That is what Paul means here when he says, “I pray that God will fill you with the knowledge of his will.” Then the NIV text says, “… through all spiritual wisdom.” I think the preposition is better translated in all spiritual wisdom. Knowledge of God’s will, in the context of all spiritual wisdom (knowledge which consists in wisdom and understanding of every sort on the spiritual level).… The kind of knowledge of God’s will we’re after is that which consists in wisdom and understanding God’s way.

Does our generation need anything more than that? That comes about by knowing God’s Word and by having hearts that love to obey him and by seeing God answer our prayers, that we might have that knowledge of his will, for we will not drift into that kind of knowledge of his will. That is the fruit of prayerfulness which brings me to the second point.

B) The purpose of this petition is that believers may live a life worthy of the Lord and utterly pleasing to him.

Start again at verse 9. “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding, and we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.”

In other words, Paul is not praying this so we might have a theoretical appreciation of the direction in which to go, nor simply to have an increased grasp of systematic theology. Rather, the reason why we’re to know what God’s will is is that we may live a life that is utterly pleasing to Christ, worthy of him.

We saw that already cast in another guise in 2 Thessalonians, chapter 1, a couple of weeks ago. There we were to live a life worthy of our calling, worthy of the gospel. Here it is personalized. “Live a life worthy of Jesus.” Have you ever been really close to someone (a friend or a colleague or somebody senior, perhaps a relative, a parent) who you regarded so highly that you just didn’t want to let them down?

When I was pastor of a church on the West Coast of Canada, we had a girl in the church, a teenager. She was a sweet kid. Her father was one of the deacons in the church, and he was a very godly man. He had a couple of sons who were pretty independent sorts, but this particular girl so revered the quality of life in her father that she did not want to hurt him and make him cry.

That was the way she put it to me. She said, “Oh, I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t want to see Dad weep.” In other words, she so regarded his sensitivity and love for her that she didn’t want to let him down. She always wanted to live up to his standard, and she went through her teenage years and into young womanhood and eventually married and is a wonderful, Christian mother to this day.

Partly, it was her own character, but it struck me as a wonderful model just the same. Here was someone who so revered a Christian leader (in this case, her own father), that she couldn’t bear the thought of hurting him. She wanted to live a life worthy of him. I realize in some families that can be a terribly coercive, manipulative sort of thing where the parents say, “Unless you do something the way I want it, in fact, you’re going to let down the family name,” and suddenly you’re being cheaply manipulated. I understand that.

But when the model is Jesus himself, should it not be axiomatic that all Christians will say, in effect, “I’d love to live a life that wouldn’t let him down. I’d love to live a life that didn’t end up where Peter did, weeping bitterly when the cock crows. I’d love to live a life worthy of him and utterly pleasing to him.”

If you think you’re so strong you can do that by dint of your forceful personality, then you don’t need to pray this prayer, but if you know, as I know of myself, that I don’t have the hope of even beginning to take the first steps of approaching a life that is worthy of the Lord, unless he empowers me and fills me with his Spirit and gives me a heart to know him, I must give myself to this sort of praying.

Christians ought to have the aim of being in this life just as holy as pardoned sinners can be, and we don’t have it in us of ourselves. If we respond to Jesus and want to live a life that is worthy of him, we will pray this prayer, for this is the goal of the prayer. This would be particularly strong in the ancient Near East where they had a shame culture. We talked about that briefly two weeks ago. It’s important to recognize it afresh.

We are so independent in the West that we do not think of any abhorrence being attached to bringing shame on relatives. In Japan, you can bring shame on the family. In the Christian way, it is presupposed you can bring shame on the Christian family, on the church, and on the head of the church, Jesus himself. We understand the nature of shame.

Within that context, Paul says, “I pray that you will have a knowledge of God’s will, a knowledge that consists in wisdom and spiritual understanding to this end, that you may live a life worthy of the Savior and utterly pleasing to him.”

C) The way that worthy life works out in practice can be characterized by four features.

They’re all quickly outlined in the text. I shan’t go through them in detail. I’ll just draw your attention to them. Do you see what he says in verse 10? “We pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way.” Now he tells us what that means so that it doesn’t remain simply abstract.

First, bearing fruit in every good work. Bearing fruit in every good work, we may be justified by grace through faith, but we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works. Christians will be characterized by their works. That is part of what it means to live a life worthy of the Lord.

Secondly, not only bearing fruit in every good work, but growing in the knowledge of God. Notice how there’s a certain circle set up here. We prayed, in the first instance, for knowledge of his will in order that we may live lives worthy of him, and if we do live lives worthy of him, one of the fruits of that is a better knowledge of God, for knowledge of God is not simply dumped on us, a great big quantity of data sloshed into our brains by which we know God better.

Part of the knowledge of God is that which emerges out of our obedience, out of our growth in conformity to his will. Let me tell you quite frankly, one of the reasons the Bible seems so dead and cold to you sometimes, one of the reasons why you don’t seem to be getting anywhere is because you’re sleeping with your girlfriend or your boyfriend or because you’re cheating on exams or because you’re not disciplining yourself in matters of prayer or because you’re nurturing bitterness.

Part of the knowledge of God turns on a life of antecedent obedience, so as you live in increasing conformity to God’s will, because you know something of God’s will, so you learn God’s will better. That’s what’s at stake here, and you get to know God better. A cycle is built up. As there can be a downward spiral that pulls you down and down and down, so there is a cycle of godliness. As you learn more of God’s way and learn more of obedience, so the obedience itself issues into greater knowledge of God. That’s what Paul says here.

Thirdly, strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience. To be strengthened with power in Paul always has to mean, always, strengthened with the same power that God used when he raised Jesus from the dead. Paul was always praying for power, and almost always, he means the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, that issues from Christ’s triumph, and that now enables us to be holy and pleasing to him. Strengthened with power. In this case, power to endure, power to be persevering, power to put up with things, to bear the load as it comes down on us, to bear it and to be patient.

Finally, joyfully giving thanks to the Father. We learn to see things from heaven’s perspective and see there is no greater blessing any human being could have ever received than the privilege of being transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son. As we appreciate these blessings more, we are found “giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to share in the inheritance of his saints in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

It is almost as if Paul cannot endure simply to say, “Thank God for the salvation you got,” without expatiating on it a little bit and making them see and feel there is nothing more important in the entire universe than having been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God’s dear Son.

Gradually, as they grow in grace, they give thanks for that, for they look around and they see the debris of humanity caught with too many temporal idols, all of which will pass away and all of which are of temporal significance only. The world passes away and all of its toys, and we have come to know the living God by no merit of our own. That is something for which to give thanks.

Even there, Paul cannot stop. He sees this has come about by the forgiveness of our sins, and that has come about by Jesus. Thus, he gives a kind of demonstration of what it means to give thanks joyfully, and he bursts into what is sometimes called the Christ hymn of verses 15 to 20 where he exalts Christ as the Lord of creation and the Lord of the church through whom we have reconciliation. Thus, he begins to exemplify in his own writing what he expects in our praying. Let us pray.

We confess, Lord God, with shame how frequently we have selfishly drifted away and cared little about your presence. Many of our prayers have been so thoughtless and formulaic and self-centered. Father, fill us with your Spirit and draw our hearts after you and teach us how to pray.

Grant that out of this group of young men and women this evening there may arise scores and scores and scores who will commit themselves to disciplined, daily prayer all the days of their lives, who will intercede with you for the things you care about, who will pray for revival, for holiness, for purity, for truth, for integrity, who will learn to live with eternity’s values in view and know your power and Spirit present in their lives because you are the God who loves to give an answer to the prayers of your children. Teach us to pray, Lord God, we ask in Jesus’ name, amen.

New International Version